KIEV, Ukraine — Ukraine, which has suffered a roundhouse blow from the economic crisis, has had no finance minister since February. It also has no foreign minister or defense minister. The transportation minister just stepped down. The interior minister has offered to resign as well, after being accused of drunken behavior.
The president and the prime minister are no longer speaking, though they were once allies and heroes of the Orange Revolution, which brought a pro-Western government to power in 2005. The spirit of that uprising has apparently been squandered in a country that seems permanently gripped by political paralysis.
The public appears so frustrated that the leader of the opposition, who has close ties to the Kremlin and is often portrayed as the villain of the Orange Revolution, is the early favorite to win the presidential election next January.
The mood here is reflected in the popularity of a video clip that has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times in recent days. It shows the prime minister, Yulia V. Tymoshenko, who once enthralled Ukraine with her rousing slogans and peasant-braid-as-tiara hairstyle, just before she was to give a televised speech this month.
Her teleprompter suddenly malfunctions, and she snaps, “It’s all gone.”
Ms. Tymoshenko was referring to her text, but her words — which can also be translated as, “Everything’s fallen apart” — have been viewed as something of an epitaph for her political movement.
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